Category Archives: Bicycle music

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Remembering Ian Hibell, the world’s most accomplished and intrepid long-distance cyclist and adventurer, who was run down and killed on a road in Greece last month, aged 74. He’d been on a ‘training ride’ which began in Hull (England) in preparation for his next trip to Nepal and Tibet. Nic Henderson talks about his friend and hero. For more about Ian Hibell’s life, adventures and bicycles, including some superb photographs, visit Nic’s excellent website. From the Tour of Britain we hear the latest news from the Rapha-Condor-Recycling team and a protestor from Climate Camp who has something to say about energy company E-on’s sponsorship of this year’s Tour.

Update: Subsequent to this broadcast, The Economist published a superb obituary of Ian Hibell.

Alastair Humphreys has cycled round the world ‘the hard way’: four years, sixty countries and forty-six thousand miles. In the first of a two part special he tells the story of his epic adventure from Yorkshire to South Africa and Chile to Colombia. Thunder and Sunshine, the second volume of his travelogue is out now, published by Eye Books.

The studio at Resonance FM is closed on 18th and 25th August so there will be no show on those dates. The second part of this two-show special will be broadcast on 1 September.

On this week’s show we ask whether the bicycle and cycling are inherently left-wing or right-wing. Featuring Ruth Beale and Karen Breneman, two artists who recently rode together from London to the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home in Liverpool in search of cycling’s socialist and non-conformist past, present and future. Putting the case for the libertarian right is the leading political blogger and cyclist Guido Fawkes who explains why leading members of the British Conservative Party are so keen to advertise their taste for two wheeled transport.

This weekend get on down to Rollapaluza XI “Kingspin” on Friday night at the Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes and Tour De Play, ‘a five mile cycle tour looking at playscapes as a form of outsider architecture’ starting at the South London Gallery at 12 noon on Saturday.

A ride along the splendid London end of the Grand Union Canal with Rob Ainsley, London cyclist and author of 50 Quirky Bike Rides, a new book about weird and wonderful places to go on bicycles in England and Wales. We visit a canal that passes over a motorway and take advantage of a little known rule that allows bicycles on certain parts of the London tube network.

This week’s show was broadcast from the excellent Southwark Lido (pictured below – more pics here). Get there while it’s still open.

Plus music from Bucky: you can see the video version over here. The London Festival of Architecture has a fantastic programme of architecture and urban design themed rides coming up, running from a month starting on 21 June. Since being on air, Alastair Humphrey’s talk at Stanfords has sold out.

Play using links below. Other file formats (e.g. Ogg Vorbis) are here.

Thanks to everyone who’s helped make The Bike Show this season, in particular reporters Kieron Yates and Amy Cooper and the fabulous engineers at Resonance FM. Thanks for listening! The Bike Show will be back in a couple of months.

In a special Valentine’s Day edition, sultry Southwark Cyclist Miss Alex Crawford explains why cycling is so good for flirting while love goddess Venus Kamura tells of the fifth annual Reclaim Love ‘happening’ on Saturday 16 February at the Eros Statue on Piccadilly Circus. Over the past few days, all across the bicycling world, there has been an outpouring of love for the inspirational Sheldon Brown who sadly died last weekend. We play a song by Oysterband, Sheldon’s all time favourite band. Plus a heads up for Wheels and Heels, a lovely bicycle fashion show on the evening of the 14th, at Columbia Road from 6pm and a chance to party ’til the break of dawn with the swashbuckling Trixie Chix, on Friday 15th February way up there in Dalston, northeast London. No excuse not to get loved up one way or another this week. Whew!